


strings

by emptinessand



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, Joshua-centric, Mentions of Suicide, but also about how he feels about shiki irt to her development and neku's, its sloppy and inconsistent esp in the themes i try to use, not beta read i just wanted it to be out here, suicide ideation, the whole works when you try to write faux-introspective joshua fic, there are more tags. i cannot think of or remember them.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22713883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptinessand/pseuds/emptinessand
Summary: The way you learned about her was when he’d sit with you, hand on his heart, the other one clinking the chopsticks against the bowl of Ramen Don shoyu, and tell you of a girl who he thought was vapid and far too cheerful and how incrediblywrongand closed off that was of him.
Relationships: Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Sakuraba Neku, Misaki Shiki & Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya, Sakuraba Neku & Misaki Shiki
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	strings

**Author's Note:**

> even if this started as me being really worked up about how every joshua and shiki interaction people put out is always "uwu they can be feminine and talk about boys together" and It Can Be Deeper Broe didnt intend this to be shippy and date is a coincidence. i remembered that valentine's is my hc birthday for joshy and wanted to get this out. wahey can you believe the bastard 'imself is an aquarius

Death is not the end, and there would be no better teacher than you, perched up top on the roof of the Ten-Four building.

You’d tell yourself this again and again and again. When your Conductor says all the Players are erased three days in or when a hungry freshmeat Reaper fades off and he’d scoff at how poorly they worked, or how incompetent the dead Shibuya dragged in were this month. Death is not the end is brutal, ugly, and raw, shoot open the sweet wording and under it’s the minimizing acidic masquerade at a consolation.

If you, you from maybe two weeks ago, heard death is not the end and it’s something positive, you’d know exactly what he said, the tones and the shrug and hear the precise sound of the words coming from his mouth;

_Uh-huh. And here’s me playing the world’s tiniest violin. Did you think you were special?_

because you’ve said this before, felt how that sentence went off your tongue without a hitch because the best grease is apathetic ideation. When your proxy was telling you about her life is on the line. Not that you were particularly listening for her, and not even because you’ve heard her name because you weren’t listening to the week before. Instead, the chords passed through your fingers, counting the days until the end of the month and the end of you.

The way you learned about her was when he’d sit with you, hand on his heart, the other one clinking the chopsticks against the bowl of Ramen Don shoyu, and tell you of a girl who he thought was vapid and far too cheerful and how incredibly _wrong_ and closed off that was of him. He would tell you of a girl who’s why he has to win this and he can’t keep playing hooky with you all week long. 

On second thought, that beginning seems off. Nearly an injustice. The way you learnt about her was through the warmth and feeling everyone who knew her spread. Maybe a you from maybe two weeks ago would add with his signature saccharine-coated poison, like an _infection_ , but you’d say now like a melody or a piece in high notes and major keys that hits your hindbrain and grabs you by the ear with its demands to be heard and be out there.

Your eyes were owlish and coifs bouncing when you curled your fingers below your bottom lip as you would tell the players you met, “didn’t you know that everyone’s your competition?”. The Players argued, “every life has value and I’d do whatever it takes to get to the Realground even if I played a million times for my Nao!”. The Players were specks of Shibuya space dust and an indignant boy shaking his fist to the sky, “They’re not just some strangers! I can’t shut them out like that!”. You would argue, “You’ll never truly understand anyone’s secret gardens… but maybe allowing strangers in you can find a new way to be yourself.” 

~~the player chokes up, hands shaking and fingers slipping away from the biting cold of the trigger when you say “zero.” and the bullet rips through hi~~

It took a month for you to admit it. It took a month and a boy who went from Shibuya’s most irredeemable lowlife to someone who loves too many too much his heart aches but something dislodged itself in you and it’s a different tune of a city you’re encoring your love affair with and it’s a story that circles back to you, perched up top on the roof of the Ten-Four building.

If you zeroed in on a statue of a particularly loyal dog by the train station, there’s two bright eyed blonde siblings and a proxy, who hasn’t been grinning this toothy in years. The one who can’t forgive you, but trusts you. The proxy who showed you lives have values and meanings and how deep your love for a person’s growth can sink and--

there’s a nervous restrained tap and it’s a green cardigan girl and her toy cat and their faces are trained on her, eyes all sparkling and every smile ear to ear when they squeal and giggle like they’re much younger and you’re not sure how you’d respond to Neku’s invite but you can see the threads that bind them together. A girl who wasn’t vapid, a girl who taught a proxy who had no idea what that word even meant for him that sometimes people just need a good listener and opened up his world for the first time and taught you, _Joshua it’s a wonderful world and you have to enjoy the moment you have to listen to me._

Death is not the end, you think. From a position as lofty as yours, death can be a learning opportunity. But you still haven’t learnt how to repay the girl you owe not committing a second suicide and bringing everyone down with you.

**Author's Note:**

> to think ive had longfic ideas that have been bouncing around my head ever since i first played twewy two years ago that still rot at less than 50% done to this day and i have this stray idea and suddenly its being uploaded in a few days after I started it
> 
> thank you for reading this meandering thing


End file.
